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How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
By: Poncho Boojo

I hear that all the time and I duly click to find out how, thinking I'll find a magic button that issues me with thousands of followers, eager to be my friend and also eager to buy my book! Not so, I'm afraid. I've made a list of some of the things that I've tried or am thinking of trying. It all acquires hard work though.

1. Forum Posting I'm a regular contributor to forums, but recently I've been asking questions and leaving my "signature" so folk can post back here in reply - and do they? Do they heck! They all reply on the forum.

2. Twitter I leave headings to my blog posts on twitter with the link, and yes I've had results this way but now I'm finding them ignored.

3. Building a Platform on Twitter... Mainly because I'm boring the hell out of my followers. I'm reluctant to download things and so I'm not bothering with feeds which I may have to change my mind about, because my followers on Twitter has hit 1700 and stopped. And I can't follow anymore, because I've reached my follow limit. So, note to self, need to research about "building a Twitter platform".

4. Facebook. This is another good way of advertising yourself, although I should imagine your friends and family would grow weary of your repetitive "Buy my book!" headline.

5. Blog Tours. This is instead of getting off your lazy arse and giving interviews on radio and TV... or rather for the not-so-famous-that-haven't-a-hell-of-a-chance-of-getting-interviewed-on-TV-or-radio. You could have a chat with other writer friends about this, but frankly don't think I'm interesting enough for anyone to want to interview me!

6. Blog carnivals. Not heard of this one before, but after excitedly researching I've discovered that it doesn't mean dressing up in brightly coloured clothes, singing and dancing in the street. I shall to look into this, but I imagine it's similar to Blog Tours?

7. Email subscription. You can invite everyone in your network to subscribe to your blog. Wasn't too sure about this one to be honest. Is there a point?

8. Link. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file. Brilliant idea, not sure the bank manager would appreciate it at the end of my rant about charges!

9. Trackback (or Pingback as it's sometimes called). This sends a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. Blogger doesn't support this, but uses Blacklink instead. I've only just started to use it, so can't comment on its usefulness yet.

10. Business Cards, brochures, flyers or whatever. This is an in invaluable way to advertise your blog. I use Vistaprint, and can't fault them.

11. RSS Feed This will let people subscribe to your blog, it means Really Simple Syndication, yeah, so simple I still haven't a clue! Anyway, isn't this the same as number 7?

12. Practise Good House Keeping on your blog that is. Keep it up-to-date, and post at least once a fortnight if not more. And always, always, reply to comments. It's so annoying when I make the effort to visit a blog, read and reply, and then ignored by the blog owner. Grrrr

13. Articles Write an article about something you've seen in another blog. Add their link, and then tell them. You never know this may lead to some of their followers following you as well!